Jim Silye

[Members Of Parliament Retiring Allowances Act, May 12th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, on Thursday when the government, in order to get the legislation into committee so that the Canadian public would not know everything about it, introduced extended hours on Thursday on our amendment to exhaust all our speakers. It knew some of our speakers had left to go home for the weekend, as many government members did. Therefore we had to introduce a subamendment.

I am trying to be as factual as I can and recollect whether in my speech when I referred to the $150,000 it was on the subamendment or on the amendment. I quite clearly state we were not debating the main motion on Thursday. I will concede that. If that has a bearing on the Chair's decision, so be it.

This is a very serious matter and I do appreciate proper consideration on this because I have been misunderstood.

[Members Of Parliament Retiring Allowances Act, May 12th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, I will include those two points and further add some points in order to help you make your decision in response to what the government whip just said.

Nothing under Standing Order 44 says I must avail myself of using Standing Order 31. I am speaking to the same question and nothing in Standing Order 44 says I have to have spoken earlier today.

Specifically, the issue is a comment I made during debate in my speech when I talked about MP pensions. I pointed out a salary figure. That was on Thursday of last week. Since that time I have been misquoted and misunderstood by the President of the Treasury Board, who is sponsoring the bill, and that is extremely important in the Chair's consideration. The President of the Treasury Board has been misquoting and misrepresenting what I said. Therefore the Canadian public misunderstands my point. I said this on Thursday. It is to the same question. I do not have to speak on the same day.

If there is any integrity in the House, if the government has any integrity, I should be allowed to make my point.

[Members Of Parliament Retiring Allowances Act, May 12th, 1995]

On a point of order, I seek unanimous consent to speak again to this bill. Standing Order 44(1) states:

No member, unless otherwise provided by standing order or special order, may speak twice to a question except in explanation of a material part of his or her speech which may have been misquoted or misunderstood, and the member is not to introduce any matter, but then no debate shall be allowed upon such explanation.

I stated something in debate. I have spoken to the bill. What I stated has been misunderstood. I seek unanimous consent to clarify this.

It is very important the Canadian public understand that what I said has been misunderstood. It is being distorted by the government. It is being distorted in the press and the media by the government. I want to see the government restore integrity to the House and let me speak.

[Supply, May 11th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, it sounds like we are back on a budget debate here.

With respect to the ethics counsellor it interesting when we point out that the Liberals failed to keep their promise in the red book. They promised that the ethics counsellor would answer to Parliament. The fact is he does not and it is to a registrar or directly to the Prime Minister. The Liberals say the best ethics counsellor is the Prime Minister and that he really is who the ethics counsellor is. That is our point. We do not have an ethics counsellor and the Liberal government promised one.

On the business of the Liberal caucus members who now claim to have not allowed the process to work, the member claims they agreed that maybe the process could work. The point is that a lot of people are saying the gun control bill will not reduce crime. Registration will not reduce crime. We already have a registration system in Canada. It has proven that it works better than the old system. Whatever level of crime we have it will not change based on registration. Criminals will not register their guns. A lot of people are saying that. That voice is not being heard by the Minister of Justice.

In terms of credibility, let us take the member's intervention here. How credible is it for a member to rise and say that one of our members, the immigration critic, took a trip to Washington at taxpayers' expense? That member himself knows there is no way that a member of Parliament, outside of cabinet, gets reimbursed for travel outside this country. It is only for travel within Canada that we get reimbursed.

If the hon. member has facts, I leave it up to him. He made an allegation. I would like to have him prove that our immigration critic went to Washington at taxpayers' expense, because that is the impression he is giving. Travel outside this country is not reimbursed. He knows that and I know that. That is an allegation not based on facts. It is just that type of partisan political comment that I think hurts the House and the reputation of politicians.

Then the hon. member went on to attack my own credibility. He charged me with back pedalling on a suggestion I made in the House. In terms of MP compensation and restructuring MP compensation which everyone in the House agrees with me privately that we should be undertaking he said that during debate last week I suggested that an MP's salary should be $144,000. I said that and I am not back pedalling on that. It is out of line for that to be defended by me outside the House. I said that in the House and I will still say in the House that we have to restructure MP salaries.

What this whole debate is about is not the amount of remuneration. It is integrity I am talking about. It is about honesty and the lack of the will of the government to address the very issue of MP pensions. It shows the lack of integrity of the government, the rookies, the veterans and everyone in the House who supports this MP pension plan. It smacks of trying to promote something by using the argument that our salaries are frozen so let us overcompensate here; we are undercompensated here, so let us overpay there.

The member who asked me the question has an accounting background. Now that I have everyone's attention by saying $144,000 in the House, and which went outside the House, let me say what MPs really get.

Those people who have been here for six years or more get $64,400. They get $27,000 tax free. If the bill goes through, they will get three and a half times what they are contributing to their pension now; $25,000 accrues to their account. That is their benefit, their asset. They get it when they turn 55 years. That represents $114,000. In the private sector no one gets $27,000 tax free. Gross that up and they are already getting $140,000.

My point is if someone wants to talk about integrity and have an open and intelligent discussion on MPs compensation, let us have it. If someone wants to talk integrity and have an open discussion on MP pension plans and why they can justify this obscene amount of money on a fat cat Cadillac pension plan, three tier, trough regular, trough light, trough stout, then let us have that discussion. However, to take these cheap shots smacks exactly of what I am accusing the majority of the members of the House, because the majority are Liberals. They are the government. They lack integrity and they should restore it.

[Supply, May 11th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, I stand corrected. I apologize for using the word. It is a slang expression that former football players used. I would replace it with intestinal fortitude.

Where is the intestinal fortitude to stand up to their convictions? Why is it that only Reform Party members are willing to take the heat from the national media to express their points of view? Why does the national media seem to support and encourage the status quo when everyone across the country wants change? They want reform. However, because everyone in the House is worried about the media hit, they are afraid to speak their minds. I am embarrassed. I am ashamed. It lacks integrity.

I do not want to speak to the veterans because they are coerced. They are finished. They have done it. They are has beens. They are millionaires. They are ready to collect at any time. However the rookies in the House have an opportunity to make a difference. The rookies in the Liberal government have a distinct opportunity to exert pressure in caucus on cabinet. Many members of the Liberal caucus are doing so. We read about them in the paper. They are the ones who are reprimanded for making democracy live and making the changes that Canadians want. They are the ones who are getting respect, not the ones who are following the line with the status quo. We need more of that. That is what this debate is all about. That is the point of the motion before us.

The Liberals said a bunch of things to get elected. The rhetoric was up here; the promises were way up here. They issued the red book in which the implementation of the rules was achievable. The targets were easy but still a double standard. The pension plan is still three times as good as those in the private sector but very achievable. They made some improvements.

Their promises were up here, to get elected. Everybody knows they campaigned on the pension plan. They were to make it the same as those in the private sector. They were to address it. What did they do? They made these little changes.

My point is that everybody in the House, especially the rookies, can make a difference. If we are to restore integrity to politicians then we in opposition have to hold the government accountable. I am holding rookie Liberal members accountable for their lack of solidarity in encouraging the government and ministers of the crown to act in accordance with what the Canadian public wants. They know what I am talking about.

[Supply, May 11th, 1995]

I have some support from the Liberal benches.

Members of the House of Commons are elected not only to represent their party platform. When issues come up and they have to consult with their constituents they should be free to represent them and if they do not they are kicked out of standing committees like the three Liberal members were kicked out of the standing committee on justice because they could not support gun control. There are lot more, but those are the courageous ones.

The biggest hoax, the biggest issue in my mind that lacks integrity is the business of the double standard of a politician. It disgusts me. I have been in the private sector almost all my life, with the exception of the last 18 months. I was outside this fish bowl. I thought I could come here and make a contribution, make a difference, but it is very difficult.

Now I am inside the fish bowl with everyone else. I am finding that there are little red fish, little blue fish and little yellow fish swimming around. The national media is swimming around with us. We cannot even make a suggestion without it being distorted by a stupid headline and a stupid commentary. The people who write the articles are not the ones who create the headlines.

In question period ministers continually do not answer questions. Why? They say that it is not answer period, that it is question period. We are charging up about $1 million per year per MP in the House, and this is the quality of work we are delivering to the Canadian taxpayer. We should be ashamed that we do not pay attention to our responsibilities and to the work we should be doing here.

There are 200 rookies here. We have an opportunity to change things. Unfortunately we are the third party. We have already shown the courage and the intestinal fortitude to do what we said we would do.

We say the MP pension plan is terrible and overly generous, and we opted out. We are showing leadership by example. That is not so with these people opposite. I cannot believe the stupidity of some Liberal rookies who allow the veterans to talk them into trough regular: "For anybody in the previous government we cannot change that. We have to leave that and get a 6:1 ratio".

Then there is trough light: "We will cut back. We will only take 3.5 to 1. We will wait until 55 years of age. We will only put in 9 per cent. We will reduce our accrual rate. We will do all this because I guess you guys know what you are doing".

Then there is trough stout where the cabinet ministers can continually add more to their pensions than anybody else.

Where is the intelligence of those rookie Liberals, some of whom I have met, some of whom I respect and some of whom I know are much more intelligent than I am? I know some of them understand the issue much better than I do and agree with me privately but do not have the guts to say so publicly.

[Supply, May 11th, 1995]

Indeed.

The Liberals want to be able to use the creation of yet another special joint committee as ammunition in the next election. The Prime Minister will stand in front of voters and talk about how Liberal ideas and initiatives have restored an integrity to the parliamentary system in Canada as a fait accompli. He will speak of how they established a special joint committee to study the code of conduct for MPs and report to both federal Houses. Finally, the Prime Minister will take great pride in the establishment of an ethics watchdog to scrutinize the conduct of Canada's politicians.

People in the real world will think that sounds pretty impressive. They should think again. The Liberals still will not concede any control over the scrutiny of their affairs, as we have witnessed and seen with the conduct of three or four cabinet ministers, two or three members of Parliament of the Liberal caucus. Nothing has been done according to the usage of the ethics counsellor in applying the rules of conduct that currently exist at all the various levels. It is a scam, a sham and a disgrace.

The ethics watchdog they appointed is a lap-dog with no teeth. The bottom line is you do not appoint somebody to scrutinize your activities and those of your colleagues. Where was the ethics watchdog during any of the three "Dupuy-gate" incidents? Nowhere to be found. Where was the ethics watchdog when the CRTC decision on direct to home satellite TV was suspiciously overturned by cabinet to the benefit of the Liberal family compact? The watchdog was nowhere to be found. I think the Liberals have lost their lapdog.

I truly gained some insight about how the Liberals are justifying the expenditure of more taxpayer money to create yet another joint committee on a code of conduct. While in opposition all these code of conduct bills were falling by the wayside. The Liberal government whip was on the committee that reviewed the Tory proposals, in particular its last ditch effort at a code of conduct, Bill C-116.

In his speech last Monday the Liberal whip referred to the difficulty he had reviewing Bill C-116. He stated:

I realized that so much time had gone by that some documents were becoming outdated.

For example, the report of the Parker commission on the dealings of Sinclair Stevens was just about forgotten and we did not have a clear recollection of its recommendations.

It was not easy to examine the whole issue.

Let me put this into perspective for members of the House. We had the Liberal whip saying that it was difficult to debate the last Tory code of conduct bill because too much time had passed since the Sinclair Stevens fiasco, which started the ethics review process, to remember the specifics. Reports were dated. Sources were poor. Details were foggy.

The Sinclair Stevens report was released in 1987. In October 1992, five years later, the Liberal whip wrote an essay in the Parliamentarian Journal entitled ``Members interests: New conflict of interest rules for Canadian parliamentarians''. In the essay he quite clearly referred to and built his argument around Sinclair Stevens case, the very case he said in the House he could not remember.

The Liberal whip is using this memory lapse to justify the creation of a new code of conduct committee at great expense to Canadian taxpayers. If the Liberals want to send members to start a code of conduct review from scratch they should at least be up front about it. They should not feed the Reform Party the line that they cannot remember what was said in the past or that old reports are useless when it is quite clear that the member remembered. In fact his party used portions of the 1992 report in some of its policies and actions to date.

The rationale used by the government whip to justify the need for the joint committee reminds me of a child with a perfectly good bike trying to justify the need for a new bike to his or her parents.

They say: "It is too old. It is not working. I do not like it because it was not my idea. Let's steal this one from the Conservatives. Let's steal the other one from the Reform Party and call it ours". That is what the Liberals are saying about all the extensive code of conduct initiatives that have previously been undertaken. They want a new bike. They want a new special joint committee to show off to Canadian voters. The speech made on Monday by the Liberal whip is testimony to the fact.

The Reform Party is saying that in a time of fiscal restraint there is nothing wrong with using an old bike and the Liberals do not need to blow taxpayers money on a new one. We do not need to send politicians across Canada and across the Atlantic to develop ideas to make politicians more open and accountable. It can be done right here using the information we already have and the minds of those who were sent to Ottawa to do more than collect frequent flyer points, those who were sent here to think, to act and to accomplish.

If the Liberals are truly serious about scrutinizing the conduct of MPs, senators and cabinet ministers, the Reform Party will work with them in the House and in the procedure and House affairs committee. More important, the independent ethics counsellor should be able to enforce the rules without fear of repercussion from his boss, the Prime Minister of Canada: a watchdog that can bite and not just bark.

I cannot understand how the government plays games with words in the English language. It uses sophistry all the time, sophistry in terms of the budget presentation, sophistry in terms of Bill C-85, the MPs pension bill. Somehow because salaries are frozen is justification for $1 million, $2 million and $3 million payouts for life after six years of service and attaining age 65.

Why do government members not come clean with Canadian taxpayers, talk about truth and talk about the facts? They said that the ethics counsellor would be answerable to Parliament. They breached that. They have not done that. They are talking about promises in the red book. They are talking about holding politicians more accountable. The Prime Minister clearly breached that promise.

Nobody hears from the ethics counsellor. He never says anything. All we ever hear is the Prime Minister saying: "I checked with him and he told me it was okay". Where does an ethics counsellor fit into the equation? He is supposed to be there to make sure, when the minister of heritage writes a letter to the CRTC advocating that a certain constituent be considered as a recipient of a radio licence, that it is a breach of his responsibilities and not in line with what he is supposed to be doing as a minister of the crown, especially after he has sworn an oath that he would not interfere or try to influence agencies and boards that work for the government.

Where is the decision on that by the ethics counsellor? There was none. Is that fair to the Canadian taxpayer who is paying for a system that is there structurally but has no teeth to it? That is not the way the system should work. That is not integrity.

Is it integrity to rise in the House and continually shoot partisan shots at each other that do not have the facts behind them? All parties are guilty of it to some degree and we should stop it.

[Supply, May 11th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to rise today to address the Reform motion that the House condemn the government for its failure to keep its red book promises to make government more open and accountable.

The Reform Party in 1988 compiled a book of principles and policies, which is probably one of the first political parties to ever put its policies and principles in writing and make a commitment to the Canadian public. On page eight it states:

We believe in the accountability of elected representatives to the people who elect them and that the duty of elected members to their constituents should supersede their obligations to their political parties.

I will predict that within the Liberal caucus when it votes on Bill C-41, the sentencing bill, there will be members who will wish to vote against the government but they will not be allowed to for fear of being kicked out of caucus or off the standing committees.

When it comes to Bill C-68, the gun control bill, some members of the caucus will want to vote against the government. They will have to toe the line or get kicked out of caucus.

Unlike Reformers, they will not be able to fulfil the wishes of their constituents. On this side of the House on both those bills members will vote the clear wishes of their constituents, established in a fashion that has shown and expressed a complete communication system with them, not a poll taken a year and a half ago and then coming out with a law like this gun control bill.

In my original speech I was to speak about how the Liberal government whip has punished, castigated, disciplined, reprimanded, reproached, scolded and penalized several Liberal members for bucking the party line and reflecting the views of their constituents. My colleagues have covered all that. We know about that. The Canadian public knows all about that.

After hearing the government whip's diatribe about Liberal ethics, which I believe is an oxymoron like Progressive Conservative, and hearing about how Liberals are spearheading a special joint committee to develop recommendations for a code of conduct for politicians, I cannot resist making a few comments directed at the Liberal whip.

In typical planet Ottawa fashion the Liberals will study the issue of accountability and review the concept of openness under the guise of a special joint committee. The committee will be comprised of seven members of the Senate and fourteen members of the House of Commons who, along with countless support staff, will travel across Canada and the world to study how other governments hold their representatives accountable. It sounds very important.

Canadian taxpayers will wave goodbye as their brave representatives, along with their entourage, sail off to foreign lands to find out how their politicians conduct themselves.

From experience I know the Liberal members of this committee will constantly utter cliches like "what we need is effective inputs for effective outputs". My favourite is from the Minister of Finance: "What we are trying to do is square the circle with this budget".

That is how governments play up politics in Ottawa with touchy issues like accountability and openness. They study them. The Tories did it and now the Liberals are following suit with their code of conduct committee. It sounds good, looks good but does not do anything.

Reform wants to bring back some sanity to this process. We can give rule number one for code of conduct without even leaving the Chamber and without leaving the shores of this land: do not waste Canadian taxpayers' money on needless junkets.

In 1987 the Ontario Supreme Court found the former cabinet minister Sinclair Stevens had breached the Canadian conflict of interest rules on 14 different occasions prior to his

resignation in 1986. As a direct result the Mulroney government introduced a conflict of interest bill for MPs which unfortunately died on the Order Paper at the end of the parliamentary session. A similar conflict of interest bill was introduced in the next session. It too died on the Order Paper.

As a result of these failed attempts, the Mulroney government created a special joint committee of the House of Commons and Senate to study the issue. Does that sound familiar?

A lengthy study of issues like conflict of interest and accountability was conducted. Witnesses were heard. Testimony was given. A 60-page report was submitted to the House and the Senate. Among the major recommendations was that an independent office be created, the holder of which would oversee the disclosure of assets and liabilities of both the members of the Senate and the Commons and act as an adviser to parliamentarians investigating possible breaches of the act. Does this sound like an ethics counsellor?

The report also recommended clear procedures be established requiring members not to vote on issues in which they have an interest.

These are a few of the recommendations of the 60-page report to the Mulroney government in 1992. Nothing has changed. The hon. Liberal whip was a member of the committee at that time. Now it appears we will spend more money and send another group out to do exactly the same thing. Can he remember what the witnesses said? Can he remember what they told him? I do not seem to recall "vote Liberal and we will reinvent the wheel" in the red book.

It is obvious the Liberals have already attempted to act on a recommendation of the 1992 report which I mentioned earlier. They appointed an ethics counsellor. However, they did not follow through with the full recommendation in their red book. The ethics counsellor does not answer to Parliament. That is a sad disgrace. That lacks integrity. That smacks of misrepresentation.

The Liberals observed this in opposition and subsequently incorporated the recommendations made to the Tories in their red ink book. I have no problem with a party picking up the ball and running with it if it has been fumbled by another party. The Liberals are very good at borrowing ideas from other parties like the Reform Party on the budget.

However, I do have a problem when they waste money to play politics with an issue so they can sell it as their own idea and initiative.

The groundwork for a code of conduct was laid in the last Parliament. Surely the issue of ethics has not changed that dramatically in the past three or four years. The only problem was that the Mulroney government lacked the intestinal fortitude to act on any of the recommendations of the code of conduct.

[Supply, May 11th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, I should like to ask the hon. member for Richmond-Wolfe a question about an incident that occurred in the House a while ago. Perhaps it is a sensitive issue for him. I pose this question with all due respect. It is about integrity. It is about respect. It is about his feeling of frustration.

One day when asking questions in question period he became frustrated with either the answers or the commentary or the behaviour of a minister of the crown or the representative of the minister of the crown. I wish the member would share his experience with us of the incident in which he stuck to his guns and was asked to leave the House. He had to go through a lot. I think it is an example of the lack of integrity displayed by certain ministers of the crown. If he would like to share that incident with us and tell us his true feelings about it, I think it would be another example of the lack of integrity of the government.

[Members Of Parliament Retiring Allowances Act, May 10th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I seek unanimous consent to address the bill again. I have spoken to it once, but in light of the fact that I have sparked some interesting reaction I was wondering if members of the House would be willing to allow me to speak to the motion.